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Bladebiter
Skills ;Foe Chaser ;Bladebiter is thrown directly ahead, flying quickly in a straight line to devastate your opponents. ;Wrathful Chop Bladebiter cleaves the space both behind and ahead of the wielder. With a killing blow the wielder restores health and mana. Lore As long as there have been people there has been war. Whether for honor, gold, or land people have fought, and always, with long fighting come the tools of the warriors' trade. Henle wanted nothing to do with war. When he was a child he shied away when the other children would wrestle in the fields or fight with sticks, pretending to be great heroes from times past. You see, Henle was a pacifist, an artist. In particular, he had a passion for blacksmithing. When he was young, Henle would watch his father at the forge, sweat rolling off his brow as his father worked the red-hot metal. The man was well known on the mountain, and had many clients. Henle sat in the corner and watched the big man shaping and folding the blades that his father was so commonly asked to forge and repair. He always felt a sensation of awe as the steel would contort and bend in his father's able hands. When he was only twelve, Henle started working in his father's workshop. At his father's side, he learned all that the man could teach about the art of smithing. From the names of all the metals he would use, to feeling out the temperature of the fire, the work was laborious but Henle was inspired and committed, and he made swift progress. Henle sharpened his skills to the point where now his father would watch him, awe and pride sparkling in the man's eye as his son worked the forge with mastery and discipline. Henle was fast outmatching him, easily picking up skills that had taken his father a lifetime to hone. For a little over three years young Henle helped his father in running the workshop. Then, one dry summer afternoon, Legwin Orecrack, master of the Ever-burning Forge, came to Henle. The old man had been hearing tales of a young prodigy down the mountain, and had come all the way from the Spine of the World to ask him and his father if he could bring Henle back to the forge, to be his apprentice. Henle graciously accepted the offer, and set off for the legendary forge at the top of the mountains. In the years to come, Henle would grow into a giant of a man, standing tall and broad he made the gnomes of the village look like children. His muscles grew hard and defined from years of forge-work, yet even as he grew larger, his work grew ever more delicate. Influenced by the gnomish dolls that walked and danced by themselves, Henle indulged his artistic tendencies, and fashioned ever more complicated automata under the tutelage of Master Orecrack. But, one day news came of his father's illness, and Henle returned home. But the home that Henle returned to was not as he remembered it. In the years that he had been gone, a band of mercenaries and thugs that called themselves the Bloodletters had stormed into the region and terrorized the little town. Henle's father, having fallen ill, was at risk of losing his workshop until Henle returned and took over, but Henle agreed to serve the Bloodletter thugs only reluctantly, only to save the forge. Indeed, soon after Henle had returned to town, a group of twelve men wearing patchwork leather approached him while Henle was taking a break from his work. He was outside of his workshop when the men rode into his yard and surrounded him. Henle recognized the crimson band on each man's arm, and recognized their leader, a long haired brute named Horris whose size was rivaled only by Henle himself. The bestial man dismounted and strode confidently to Henle. "I hear that a new Master of the forge has arrived. Henle, isn't it? It is good that you've come back to replace your doddering father. I have tested his blades in combat and," the man laughed haughtily and threw a broken blade at Henle's feet. "I am not impressed." He spat, and then went on. "I picked up this sword a month ago off a soldier who had wandered too far from the path," this brought another laugh from his men. "The piece of junk broke not a fortnight later. I demand you make me and my gang a new set. " Henle knew that these men had shaken down every citizen of his home town, and that they regularly smashed up merchant stalls and shops for protection money. He could only guess at the havoc they would continue to wreak if should he arm them. So, he refused. Horris' face reddened with anger. "Mark my words. I'll only warn you once, blacksmith, if you do not make my men these weapons I will make you suffer for it, and you will make them anyway. You have a week!" With these words lingering in the air, the men left. Angry at Horris and his men Henle had followed them out of his workshop, cursing and shouting. Horris only laughed as him and his men rode out of town. A few days passed, and Henle was determined not to work a blade, let alone armor, lest they go to the bandits. Instead he took on the farmers' jobs. He sharpened plowshares and fixed carts, wheel to axle. Still, on the fifth night, Henle was awoken by the screams of villagers late in the night. He hurriedly slipped out into the streets, blurry-eyed against the sudden brightness of the many fires. The flaring lights, and cacophonous screams brought him out of his grogginess; as he stood outside his workshop, motionless, Horris approached on horseback casually throwing a torch into the window of a nearby house. Horris looked to Henle a smirk on his smug face. "I warned you little blacksmith, now your village will burn for your refusal to me." Horris then spurred his mount to quickly ride off to join his men in their pillaging. The men were busily burning down everything Henle had ever held dear. Fury and rage filled Henle's heart. The men were avoiding his forge, punishing him. The structure was large and made of the living stone. Of all the buildings in town, this one would not burn. Henle stoked the fires, and ran the bellows, he pumped until the fire was huge and the sweltering heat rolled over him in waves. Henle looked deep into a fire that echoed his own wrath, fury at the men who had destroyed his home, and it was then that a deep and powerful voice echoed in his head. "We are the masters of creation, Henle. Let this terror be the seed that brings forth your greatest work." The fire of Henle's forge began to swirl and thrum with hot energy, taking the fiery form of Hephaestus, Lord of Steel, and Titan of the Forge. The Master of Craft continued. "Take the destruction and make of it something new, make something of your pain, and then give it to those creatures, a gift of wrath." The fiery figure that was Hephaestus reached out from the flames of the forge, one of his four great arms stretched past Henle and placed upon his anvil an ingot of unrecognizable metal. Henle examined the ingot, his fingers touching it, exploring the strange surface. It was warm, bronzed, and felt far too light in his hand to be the material from which a good weapon could be forged, but it was not every day a Titan interfered in the affairs of man. Henle's eye cast about his forge. There, against the wall, lay two plowshares, their newly sharpened edges shining in the bright light of the forge. Grinning, Henle began to work. As the flames rode higher, Hephaestus grew until he loomed over the young smith, hard at work joining the wide blades to the strange bronzed material, and then those to a stout oaken spear. What should have taken months was done in what seemed like only hours, and as dawn rose over the ravaged town, Henle flame-polished his mighty weapon in a fire that even as it dwindled, held the form of four-armed Hephaestus, Lord of the Forge. When the fire was only coals, a huge, double-bitted axe shined like the glittering pain in his heart. As the flaming visage faded away at last, one of the four arms pointed at the door, and the bandits sleeping off their binge beyond. "There are so many of them," Henle began, but Hephaestus quieted him with his own words. "I will be with you, let us begin our great work." Hefting his newly forged weapon, Henle understood. As the sun made its way across the burning sky, Henle laid waste to the Bloodletter gang. He cut them down where they lay, bursting into dens and flops, kicking down doors and cleaving heads from bodies. With each enemy that fell before him, Henle found his wounds miraculously healed, his strength renewed. It was as if Bladebiter was drawing out their life, and feeding it back into him. When Henle was surrounded, Henle swung the massive axe behind and before him, cleaving all. None could stand in his way. At last, Horris himself stood before Henle, at the end of the long main street. The man was a silhouette amongst the smoke of the dying flames that had ravaged the city the night before. "Little blacksmith!" Horris began to shout, in challenge, but Henle was hearing none of it. With a whip of his mighty arms, Henle flung the axe forward, flying in a line to smash into his foe. As Horris fell, Henle heard a shout at his flank. Surprised, he turned to intercept the attacker, and found the magical axe again in his hand. Again he smashed at the attackers, behind him and before him, all fell, destroyed. After he had purged his ruined city, Henle brought the bodies to the forge and piled them high in the newly kindled fire. As they burned, Hephaestus again rose from the fires and looked at what Henle had wrought. "I regret that you had to be the instrument of destruction, Henle," began the Titanic vision rising from the roiling smokes. "Yet now you must be the instrument of creation." The titan reached forth from the smoke and fire and plucked the axe, Bladebiter, from Henle's grasp. Henle watched without understanding until Hephaestus spoke again. "There are survivors, Henle, and they will need a leader, and a forge." The titan crossed his four arms, Bladebiter had disappeared in a flare of smoky fire. Hephaestus raised his voice a final time, even as his form was dissipating with the dying fire. "At times, it is necessary to destroy to create. This axe will serve me better in the Battles Above, but you, creator, will serve me better here." Henle understood, and thanked the Titan for his guidance, as the coals died away. Then Henle turned to his stricken village, for now, he had a home to rebuild. f the wielder. With a killing blow the wielder restores health and mana ; Category:Weapons